Ayaan Hirsi Ali citations (56 citations)

NOS Journaal, official Dutch newsrail, 8 pm, August 30, 2006. "Met gelijkgezinden kun je alleen maar een kerkdienst* houden, en zoals bekend, houd ik niet van kerkdiensten." "Kerkdienst" means church service of a Christian denomination, such as Mass (liturgy) and cannot be used in Dutch to describe a Muslim prayer service.

“The man, who was probably an itinerant traditional circumciser from the blacksmith clan, picked up a pair of scissors. With the other hand, he caught hold of the place between my legs and started tweaking it, like Grandma milking a goat. "There it is, the kintir," one of the women said. Then the scissors went down between my legs and the man cut off my inner labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat. A piercing pain shot up between my legs, indescribable, and I howled. Then came the sewing: the long, blunt needle clumsily pushed into my bleeding outer labia, my loud and anguished protests, Grandma's words of comfort and encouragement. "It's just this once in your life, Ayaan. Be brave, it's almost finished."”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali livre Infidel

When the sewing was finished, he cut the thread off with his teeth.
Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 2: Under the Talal Tree

“Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)

“Many well-meaning Dutch people have told me in all earnestness that nothing in Islamic culture incites abuse of women, that this is just a terrible misunderstanding. Men all over the world beat their women, I am constantly informed. In reality, these Westerners are the ones who misunderstand Islam. The Quran mandates these punishments. It gives a legitimate basis for abuse, so that the perpetrators feel no shame and are not hounded by their conscience or their community. I wanted my art exhibit to make it difficult for people to look away from this problem. I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that "Islam is peace and tolerance."”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali livre Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 16: Politics

“The most pressing question of our time is this: Is European society to be taken over by a radical invasion of Muslim immigrants?”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"Author, activist condemns Muslim faith at Palm Beach talk", Palm Beach Daily News (21 March 2009)

“Every accommodation of Muslim demands leads to a sense of euphoria and a conviction that Allah is on their side. They see every act of appeasement as an invitation to make fresh demands.”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"Author, activist condemns Muslim faith at Palm Beach talk", Palm Beach Daily News (21 March 2009)

“Where there is no freedom of speech, there is no conscience.”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Speech on Freedom of Expression at the European Parliament, 14 February 2008

“Islam is not a religion of peace. It's a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can.”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"Author, activist condemns Muslim faith at Palm Beach talk", Palm Beach Daily News (21 March 2009) http://web.archive.org/web/20090324042409/www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/03/21/0321muslimsali.html

“In October 2002, I flew to California. It was the first time I had ever been in the United States, and I realized almost immediately that my preconceptions of America were completely ludicrous. I was expecting rednecks and fat people, with lots of guns, very aggressive police, and overt racism – a caricature of a caricature. In reality, of course, I saw people living perfectly well-ordered lives, jogging and drinking coffee.”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali livre Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 15

“We had already learned part of the Quran by heart in Mogadishu, although of course we had never understood more than a word or two of it, because it was in Arabic. But the teacher in Mecca said we recited it disrespectfully: we raced it, to show off. So now we had to learn it all by heart again, but this time with reverent pauses. We still didn't understand more than the bare gist of it. Apparently, understanding wasn't the point.”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali livre Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 3

“This was Saudi Arabia, where Islam originated, governed strictly according to the scriptures and example of the Prophet Muhammad. And by law, all women in Saudi Arabia must be in the care of a man. My mother argued loudly with the Saudi immigration official, but he merely repeated in an ever louder voice that she could not leave the airport without a man in charge.”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali livre Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 3: Playing Tag in Allah's Palace

“This is exactly how minds are opened: through honest, frank dialogue. Tears may be shed, but not blood.”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 14, “Opening the Muslim Mind: An Enlightenment Mind” (p. 209)

“With our grandmother staying behind in Somalia, my mother had nobody with whom to share tasks and plans. She could do nothing on her own. She wasn't supposed to go out on the street without these new guardians of ours, our uncles, and neither were we. To phone them she had to scuttle down to the corner grocer, with my ten-year-old brother in tow acting as her protective male.”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali livre Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 3

“Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls' genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love. A culture that protects women's rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man.”

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 14, “Opening the Muslim Mind: An Enlightenment Mind (pp. 212-213)